Icewind Dale Heart of Winter Review - PAGE 1

Brought to you by the good folks at Black Isle Studios, Heart of Winter is the expansion to their successful AD&D based RPG Icewind Dale. Heart of Winter picks up almost immediately from where the original ends. Even with the defeat of Belhifet there is no rest for your hardy band of adventurers. A new threat to the Ten-Towns emerges when the barbarian hordes of the north become united under the banner of a mysterious, charismatic leader who has risen from the dead. Investigating this new threat, your party finds itself in Lonelywood, the youngest of the Ten-Towns and also the northernmost settlement in all of Faerun. From here you will venture forth deeper into the frozen north

And so begins Heart of Winter, promising great adventure and challenges for those who hunger for more after Icewind Dale. Black Isle Studios has included a whole slew of new things to play with in this expansion. In addition to more areas to explore, more monsters to fight, and new weapons, items, and spells to use, Black Isle has updated the Icewind Dale engine by incorporating elements from Baldurs Gate II. Not only is it now possible to play IWD and HoW in 800x600 windowed mode as well as full screen, but BGIIs drop away menus were also incorporated into HoW. There are also new character portraits and sounds as well as a new experience point cap for all character classes, allowing them to reach 30th level. A new gameplay mode called Heart of Fury mode that allows for harder monsters and more XP to be gained was also included. Finally there is also improved 3D acceleration support in the form of OpenGL. For the most part however, HoW is more or less fundamentally the same in gameplay as with the original IWD.

Players control a party of 6 customizable characters, either imported straight from IWD or taken from a batch of pre-generated characters that are of appropriate level for HoW. Note that although it is possible to use level 1 characters in this expansion, it is highly recommended that you either import characters that are level 9 or above to play. If you have any doubts as to the minimum level requirement, the first encounter or two should convince you otherwise. Yours truly had unfortunately deleted his original IWD characters a couple of days before they announced this expansion (doh!), but thankfully the pre-generated characters were more than adequate as they were already seasoned adventurers at level 11 or above.

Moving about in HoW is achieved in the same way as in IWD: by clicking on the location of where you want your characters to go. Again, like in IWD, your mouse cursor changes depending on the context of the area your mouse is over. Memorizing spells, and manipulating your inventory is also pretty much the same. Finally, moving from area to area is achieved via a large painting-like map with small titled pictures that indicate the destination.

Comments

It is true, that there are only a few areas in HoW. However, there is now more in the free downloadable Add-On "Trial of the Luremaster" and you can only access it, if you have HoW. Together with that, you get something for your money.